While I liked each and every solution other wise monks have been so kind to come up with so far, when I looked at the solution of japhy, I immediately saw that this is the one I have been searching for! It is clean and concise and perlish, and, quite amazingly, it is just one statement, so I can eliminate the compare sub alltogether which, as I hope, will make my script even faster!

I am beginning to see that after a certain point, Perl programming becomes a matter of pure aesthetics...